Category: Chippie Tuesday

We are almost on the home straight of Blogging 201 and I am running out of witty titles for my posts. Regardless, the topic for Day 7 is blogger challenges, events and conferences, something that I didn’t even know existed.

The challenge part of this post is to dare yourself to establish our own blogger challenge; essentially setting a group of bloggers with an ongoing task in a theme as broad or specific of your choosing. No mean feat, huh? I think that they could write an entire two week course on establishing a blogging challenge, getting it off the ground, getting people interested in it and keeping the momentum going. Maybe then I would have the courage to set one up, but in the meantime I think I will just join someone else’s.

I suppose in a way we all run our own little blog challenges a bit, we categorise every one of our posts, even though most of them are rather broad topics; Food, Travel, Healthy Living, some of the themes I add to on the regular are a little bit more specific; I have Fun with Fruit where I experiment with ways to use different fruits in different ways, or Chippie Tuesday where I made chips in different methods and posting them on, you guessed it, Tuesdays.

After trawling through a list of different challenge groups, some pretty vague and some far too specific for me, I have discovered the Flavor of the Month page – subject: food (√), timeframe: monthly (√) and a good following (√). Bring on the first Friday of August to get the month’s theme!

Okay, Dylan, hold your horses; upon checking out the founder’s page, she is doing a 50 day computer-less challenge which means that the next flavoured month could even be September.

Silver lining; that gives me time to brainstorm and set up my own challenge!

This week’s instalment of Chippie Tuesday is going to be a bit of an ode to the French flag, the Tricolore. I love carrots, and parsnips, and I recently discovered purple carrots, and have since taken quite a liking to them too. So, while it is not a completely accurate recreation, I have taken some creative licensing in creating a chip version of the flag in celebration of Bastille Day.

I had seen purple carrots often enough, but I had never garnered up the courage to actually try them, until recently. I was pleasantly surprised by their flavour; like carrots and parsnips, their earthy scent fills the air like they have just been plucked from the rich soil they are grown in. They lack the distinct crunch of a regular carrot, but when the knife slides through them with satisfying ease, you know that, when cooked, the soft flesh with be comforting and moreish.

Begin by switching your oven on to 180°C. I have found that a fan forced bake will crisp the chips up better than an ordinary bake, but if your oven doesn’t have this option, then it’s not the end of the world. Slice any amount of any combination of coloured carrots into sticks of your desired thickness, I cut mine into eights lengthways and then each thin strip in half – about the length and width of your index finger (without thinking about it in terms too cannibalistic).

Coat the chips in olive oil with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, you don’t need much else because the natural sugars will caramelise, enhancing their sweetness and flavour as they roast. That doesn’t mean to say that adding a little inspiration is out of the question; I find carrots are matched brilliantly with balsamic vinegar, soy sauce or even honey if your sweet tooth is influencing you.

Roast for about 30 minutes; the cooking time really depends, not only on your oven, but also how thinly sliced your carrots are – so don’t leave them unattended too long! Serve them hot with an extra sprinkle of salt and enjoy this vaguely festive snack!

One of the (many) perks of living in Europe, is how easily accessible such a wide range of fruits and vegetables are. Because of New Zealand’s geographical isolation, the cost of importing out of season produce is hardly economically viable, and vegetables that are grown in greenhouses, like tomatoes, lack that fresh, powerful flavour that real sunshine gives them.

Aubergine is one of my favourite vegetables; no doubt I have harped on about it numerous times already and I love that in Europe I can eat them basically all year round for almost the same price in any month; back home winter price can be at least three times the price in summer- sometimes even more!

Even though I am the first to sing the eggplant’s praise, I am not in a hurry to admit that it isn’t the perfect vegetable – it does have one to two faults. One of those being that it has to be cooked. Well. Unlike many a vegetable that we find one our tables and plates during the warmer months, we cannot toss it through a salad like cucumbers or carrots, nor can we barbeque or pan-fry them; relishing the soft crunch as we sink our teeth into them. Eggplant requires a relatively lengthy cooking time – the kitchen isn’t exactly my ideal summer destination.

This recipe is something I picked up in el país vasco – the Basque country of northern Spain. Not only are they delicious, but they need hardly any prep time and can be left in the oven to cook while you do something a bit more fun!

I love the crunch that thinly sliced aubergine gets when it is baked in a hot oven. I find the nutty flavour of the eggplant is a real showpiece of this dish; subtle and savoury in contrast to the spicy seasoning I added.

While your oven is heating to 180°C, slice your eggplant in half, then into thin fingers about 1cm in width. The taller sections can be sliced in half, or even thirds. The fleshy centre isn’t going to crisp up as well as the firm outer layer; you can discard it if you want but I don’t like waste and it is delicious all the same.

Now for the pièce-de-résistance; the spices are what really bring this dish to life. As I am not one for carefully measuring anything out, I will leave the proportions up to you. Place you eggplant fingers in a large bowl and liberally drizzle them with olive oil. Along with a dash of salt and pepper, sprinkle with cayenne pepper, chilli powder, a hint of ginger and cinnamon. While neither the ginger nor cinnamon are traditionally used in this tapa, the sweet, whispering undertones really enhance the flavour.

Toss the contents of the bowl until they are well combined, adding additional oil or seasoning as you see fit, before roasting for 25-30 minutes.

Serve with a simple yoghurt sauce, like the one I used here, and some chopped parsley for a bit of freshness to cut through the spice. I think many people don’t see the benefits of eating spicy food in hot weather like this because it makes you sweat more; but sweating is actually a good way for your body to regulate its temperature and excrete toxins. The yoghurt sauce will cool your mouth while the spices warm your body – especially the cayenne pepper and ginger which are good for circulation. So, putting two and two together, I think what I am saying is that by eating my spicy eggplant fries every day, not only am I creating a delicious meal, but I am also doing wonders for my body! Oh, très fantastique!

My post a few weeks back about the markets of Marseille made me think about a couple of things. The reminder of the amazing range of spices, flavours and smells; so foreign to the traditional French style of cooking, made me think about the flavours of my childhood.

I grew up with an eclectic mix of flavours and cooking styles – like most of New Zealand, and trying new dishes from exotic cultures was not an uncommon occurrence. There is one dish that does stand out in my memory particularly, and that is peanut satay. Until last week, I didn’t realise how much I missed this mildly spicy, nutty sauce with its rich, dark-yellow, turmeric-induced colour.

The French are not known for their tolerance of spicy food – far from it in fact, and when the nation has a love affair with sweetness that runs as deeply as it does here, the thought of eating salty peanut butter for breakfast is so unimaginable that it is almost impossible to find decent peanut butter anywhere. So I sacrificed a tablespoon of my dwindling stock for this recipe.

Mix a teaspoon of turmeric, a tablespoon of peanut butter and a tablespoon of red curry paste with a healthy drizzle of olive oil and another drizzle of warm water. Briskly mix until you have a consistently smooth paste – the only lumps should be the bits of peanuts… unless you’re using smooth peanut butter, which you shouldn’t be doing, because crunchy is where it’s at.

Peel and hollow out half of a small pumpkin, half it and slice into thin slices, as thin as you can get them – a mandolin with make easy work of it, or a sharp knife will suffice. As you may have noticed recently, I am a bit addicted to pumpkin, obviously any root veg will do; potato, sweet potato or even carrot.

Toss the veges through your sauce until they are all nice and coated, distribute them evenly over a baking tray and bake at 180°C until crisp and golden, rotating every once in a while; this will take about 30 minutes.

The beauty of this recipe is that you don’t really need to prepare any sauce to go with them – they are baked in the sauce! However, if you are like me and didn’t judge the levels of spiciness too well, you might want to prepare a little yoghurt sauce or cucumber dip to cool things off a little!

Like the majority of human beings who have ever eaten polenta chips, I am a fan. Simple as that. In fact, I am a fan of almost every kind of chip; which is why I have a whole series of chip-orientated posts in the pipeline- stay tuned! I might even go as far as saying I could devour a sizzling bowl of polenta chips faster than their French fry equivalents.

During one of my many episodes of craving, fantasising and googling unique food combinations, my mind drifted to roast pumpkin, then to polenta fries, and then back to pumpkin. Before I knew it, my brain had fused the two together and right in front of me was a scribbled and makeshift recipe for pumpkin polenta fries.

This recipe is an expansion of a simple pot of pumpkin puree, I had no real idea about what I was doing, or if it was going to work out- but that is how most of my creations begin! I added half a cup of milk and half a cup of polenta to the mashed equivalent of a small pumpkin, along with a knob of butter, a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. I wanted to harness the milk’s creaminess and the polenta’s absorption to create a firm mixture, the nutty flavour and texture was an added bonus!

Spread into a thick slab on a cling-filmed baking tray, I resisted the urge to eat the mixture then and there, instead, enjoying the sweet scented steam while it cooled. The next day dragged on; all I could think about was the bright orange mixture chilling in my refrigerator. Alas, I knew that this was a necessary step for the mixture to hold its shape.

That night, I sliced the mixture into thick fingers and carefully removed them from the tray. I coated them in flour with a hint of cayenne pepper, which I love because of the tingly warmth that it gives you.

Not one to ever deep fry anything, I oven baked them like my churros, at 180°C for 45 minutes, rotating them every 10 minutes. The timing on one oven is always going to differ from the next, so it is best to keep an eye on them and leave them until they are a shade that you find most desirable.

Unlike your average Kiwi, I detest tomato sauce, so instead I served mine with a quick Greek yoghurt sauce- yoghurt, lemon juice and ground cumin. And then I ate them in bed; paradise.